Ramp says the heaviest AI users among U.S. businesses are spending thousands of dollars per employee each month on AI tools, tokens, APIs, and infrastructure. Even so, new data from the Ramp AI Index shows that most companies are still spending far more on employees than on AI.
The findings come as some tech executives say AI compute and token costs are becoming a major operating expense. Nvidia and Mercor executives have both recently said compute or token costs have grown large enough to compare with employee costs.
Top AI Users Spend Thousands Per Employee
Ramp’s June AI Index report found that the top 1% of firms by AI spend per employee spend about $7,449 per employee each month. Ramp describes those firms as the most “AI-pilled” companies in its data.
That figure is still below the roughly $16,000 per month earned by an average software engineer, according to the source article. The top 10% of firms spend about $611 per employee each month.
Most companies spend far less. Ramp said the median firm spends $11.38 per employee each month, about the cost of one enterprise AI subscription seat.
AI Spending Is Still Rising
AI spending among the top 1% of firms rose 14.1% per employee last month. Ramp said those companies often use multiple frontier models, platforms that provide access to open source models, and specialized AI-native software.
The data suggests that heavy AI users are not locked into one provider. Instead, they move across different vendors and use lower-cost models when needed.
According to TechCrunch, the findings show that even aggressive AI adopters have not yet reached the point where AI spending exceeds software engineering payroll costs.
Budgets Remain Uneven Across Companies
The gap between the top spenders and typical companies remains wide. Firms at the top of Ramp’s index are spending hundreds of times more per employee than the median company.
Ramp’s research uses aggregated and anonymized card and bill pay spending from more than 70,000 U.S. businesses. The company said its AI Index now tracks spending intensity, including subscriptions, coding agents, tokens, APIs, and other AI categories.
Featured image credits: Magnific.com
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